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Wayne's World 2 (US - BD)

Gabe Powers takes a look at Wayne and Garth's next movie on Blu-ray. Way!

Let me tell you all a little story about a twelve year old boy named Gabe Powers. One day my parents took me to see a movie called Wayne’s World—a movie that was, for all intents and purposes, made for twelve year old boys. I adored the film so much I bought the VHS tape from McDonalds. It was my first ever home video purchase, and I proceeded to watch it every weekend forever and ever. Then the sequel came out (within the year), and I taped that one off HBO, and proceeded to watch it every weekend forever and ever.

When forever and ever finally came to an end I was entirely sick of the Wayne’s World films. The sight of these movies literally made me ill (not really). And then the driving forces behind the films started besmirching their own names. Dana Carvey died pretty quiet death with movies like Clean Slate and Master of Disguise, but Mike Myers and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels both virtually exploded with increasingly awful motion picture product. Michaels produced more SNL based movies like Stuart Saves his Family, It’s Pat, Coneheads, A Night at the Roxbury, and Ladies Man. Myers went on to write and star in the Austin Powers series, which may mark the exact moment my personal sense of humour diverged entirely with the rest of the world, and eventually made The Love Guru, which all hyperbole aside, is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It was with these terrible thoughts weighting heavily in my mind that I reproached the Wayne’s World series.

Feature

Having won back the rights to their show, and finally moving out of the house, Wayne and Garth live a reasonably happy life, but Wayne craves more. Cassandra’s band, Crucial Taunt, is now on a major label, and their new producer Bobby Cahn (Christopher Walken) has his eye on tearing the beauty away from her band and Wayne. In retaliation Wayne tries to organize a music festival (the idea came to him in a dream). Meanwhile, Garth finds romance in a beautiful woman, who may be more than he can handle.

The second movie is one of the more successful comedy sequels, perhaps ever, which is comparatively speaking not that impressive. The script is much more heavy-handed, and the dated nature of some of the jokes doesn’t service the material as well as it did in the first film. The story is secondary to the gags this time too, the plot is largely a retelling of every sitcom standby ever, and the spoof aspect is amped to overtake the character jokes. This is obviously where the Mike Myers I grew to love started to go wrong. Still, the film is charming, and though not funnier than the first film overall, it has more hard belly laughs. Again, the supporting cast and their characters are the thing that impresses me the most after years away. Ralph Brown is the standout along with James Hong, but Christopher Walken is a joy as well (even if he’s sort of sleepwalking through the role).

Video

Wayne’s World 2 is a little more ‘theatrical’ than the original, with more camera movement and more hard-edged lighting. The overall contrast is noticeably harsher, leading to some truly rich and sharp blacks. The print is still teaming with slight noise and grain, and the details aren’t really any more impressive, but the colours are fuller and brighter. The edge enhancement issues are mostly gone, but they are replaced with slight bleeding, especially during the brightest daylight scenes, and whenever the lighting takes on a warm hue. There is one real plus to the increased definition, and that is finally being able to see the wire rod holding up the super-fake airplane Wayne and Garth take to London.

Audio

Wayne’s World 2 has a slight edge in the technology department over the original (it’s post DTS), but the actual sound design isn’t much more impressive. The film opens with the awesome intro to ‘Frankenstein’, then impresses again with another large scale concert scene. There are some fun abstract sound effects during Wayne’s dream sequences, and some fun aggressive effects during his Kung-Fu fight with his future father in law.

Extras

Extras begin with a commentary from director Stephen Surjik, who’s less fun than Spheeris, but whose more intellectual approach is still intriguing and actually quite educational. He jumps onto the right foot by referring to the film as a ‘smart stupid film’, and fills the track with information pretty consistently. This disc also features an ‘Extreme Close-Up’ retrospective featurette (14:00), which was clearly filmed at the same time as the first film retrospective.

Overall

After more than ten years away I’m happy to say I still have a bit of a soft spot for Wayne and Garth, and I can still pretty much repeat every word of the film verbatim. I don’t forgive Lorne Michaels for Coneheads or Myers for The Love Guru, but I can admit they did some good stuff too. The film doesn’t look or sound spectacular on Blu-ray, so I’m not fully recommending a repurchase for fans that already own the DVDs, which feature all the same extras.

* Note: The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray release.

30th July 2009 10:07#7

I loved this one more than the first one. It's funny but I had seen this before The Graduate so it was only after I saw The Graduate that I realised the climax! If I didn't know better, I'd have thought The Graduate had ripped off this movie! It is really enjoyable, but what's with the lack of extras? Is it that we're not worthy?

With respect to Myers' other movies, The Love Guru was really unfunny and uninspired, but I do enjoy the Austin Powers movies a lot, Shrek and Shrek 3 to a lesser extent.

30th July 2009 14:05#8

i had that same VHS from Mcdonalds and grew up watching part 1 repeatedly, for a while now i almost had forgotten about these two movies, definitely going to look into picking these 2 up on dvd or blu when i get the chance

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